Yammer Integration with Office 365 Groups

Yammer Integration with Office 365 Groups

Around the world, teamwork is on the rise. Our research suggests employees now work on nearly double the number of teams than they did just five years ago. This means, more than ever, people are reliant on their peers to help get things done. But a “one size fits all” approach does not work when it comes to group collaboration—different tools appeal to different groups and address unique needs. Already in use by 85 percent of the Fortune 500 as part of Office 365, Yammer is the social network built for work. Yammer connects teams across your organization, enabling the open exchange of ideas that results in better decisions, faster.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Yammer is integrating with Office 365 Groups, bringing together the power of open collaboration with the productivity tools millions rely on every day. With this integration, Yammer users can easily turn ideas into action with access to SharePoint sites and document repositories, a shared OneNote notebook, and lightweight task management with Planner. These new experiences and more will be rolling out in phases over the coming months.

Let’s take a closer look at how Yammer gets even better with Office 365 Groups.

Create and share content with Office Online and SharePoint

You can now take advantage of the powerful content creation and management capabilities of Office Online and SharePoint from within Yammer.

Individuals and teams can create and co-author Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents on the web. You can also quickly share files in Yammer by uploading documents from a personal OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint site using the new Yammer file picker. No matter how you choose to share a file, all links and attachments render in rich preview.
Additionally, teams working within Yammer can now take advantage of a SharePoint document library, making it easy to manage files, apply workflow, review version history and comply with document retention policies. Each team also gets a SharePoint site, which gives members the ability to create structured content like wikis and blogs.

Share files from your personal OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or group SharePoint document library.

Attachments and links render in rich preview.

Take note with OneNote

Yammer also gives your team access to a shared notebook in OneNote to help ideas take shape. OneNote gives team members a great way to jot down notes, keep meeting minutes and brainstorm the next big thing.

Gather ideas and inspiration in OneNote.

Stay organized with Planner

To help you stay on top of key deliverables, Yammer now provides your team with quick access to Planner’s simple-to-use task management capabilities. Planner lets teams create new plans, assign tasks and track progress throughout the life of a project.

Because Office 365 Groups are part of your company’s global address list (GAL), it’s a cinch to share content to Yammer by email. Whenever you receive an email that would benefit from open discussion and sharing, you can forward it to Yammer by typing the name of your group in the recipient list—auto-complete fills in the email address.

Yammer is now connected to the Office 365 Groups service, so all group properties, including name, description, profile picture, membership and public/private setting, are available in both Yammer and Azure AD, where Office 365 groups are stored. For example, whenever users or admins add and remove group members in Yammer, these changes are reflected across Office 365, and permissions are updated accordingly. Admins can also centrally manage groups in the Office 365 admin center and apply PowerShell scripts to them to simplify bulk updates.

Centrally manage groups in Yammer from the Office 365 admin center.

Earlier this year, we integrated with the Office 365 reporting dashboard and rolled out Yammer usage reports to help admins monitor Yammer usage across your network. To provide greater transparency, we will soon give admins the ability to export and share this usage data via Power BI content. Once we roll out Yammer group usage reports in the coming weeks, admins will also be able to drill down into group-level analytics and make this data available to others within your organization.

What to expect as we integrate Yammer with Office 365 Groups

The integration between Yammer and Office 365 Groups will roll out in phases over the next several months.

Customers who enforce Office 365 identity will receive the new integrated experience first. When new groups are created in Yammer, they will automatically be able to take advantage of tools like SharePoint, Planner and OneNote. Phase 1 starts later this year. Subsequent phases will automatically migrate existing groups in Yammer, address remaining Office 365 tenants and deliver integration with Outlook Calendar as well as enhancements to SharePoint and Planner. For the latest details around the rollout of Yammer’s integration with Office 365 Groups, please follow this article.

Since Yammer was turned on for all eligible Office 365 customers earlier this year, we have seen huge growth in usage. The vast majority of Yammer customers now use it as part of an Office 365 subscription. With Office 365 applications such as SharePoint and OneNote becoming an integral part of the Yammer experience, users will need an Office 365 subscription that includes these services. As such, the Yammer Enterprise subscription will no longer be available for purchase on a standalone basis; customers can transition to an Office 365 plan such as K1 or E1. The Office 365 K1 plan, priced at $4 per user per month, provides additional benefits such as Outlook email. For more details, read this article.

Yammer—part of the Office 365 complete collaboration solution

Office 365 embraces the diverse workstyles and needs of the modern workplace by giving teams their choice of tools. Groups that prefer the familiarity and structure of email can use groups in Outlook, which expand the capabilities of traditional email distribution lists. For groups that want to meet and work together in real-time, there’s Skype for Business. And groups that want to connect across the organization and foster open conversations can use Yammer.
No matter what collaboration solution your team chooses, Office 365 has you covered.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Do Office 365 Groups provide conversations in both Yammer and Outlook?A. To avoid fragmenting team conversations, Office 365 Groups will provide either conversations in Yammer or conversations in Outlook. Office 365 Groups created in Yammer will have conversations in Yammer. Office 365 Groups created elsewhere in the suite will have conversations in Outlook.

Q. What happens to files stored in Yammer with the introduction of the group SharePoint document library?A. Files uploaded to Yammer are stored in Azure today and will remain so for the time being while retaining all their current permissions and capabilities. With the Office 365 integration announced today, Yammer users will also be able to upload and store files in their group’s SharePoint document library. We recommend storing content that needs the structure and management capabilities of SharePoint in the group document library. For easy, quick sharing of images and documents, or to stream videos in Yammer, we recommend continuing to use Yammer. To provide unified file storage, our long-term plan is to migrate all files stored in Yammer to SharePoint.

Attaching files to a Yammer conversation from OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint from the new file picker experience simply shares the links and rich previews of those files; it does not change where the files are stored. For more information on attaching files in Yammer, please read “Attach a file to a Yammer message.”

Q. What happens to Yammer Notes with the introduction of the group OneNote?A. In the coming months, we will replace the Yammer Notes functionality with group OneNote notebooks, which provide a better notebook experience, including rich text formatting, inking and the ability to organize notes by sections and pages. In the short term, nothing will happen to existing Yammer Notes. Over the coming months, we will migrate existing Yammer Notes to Word documents and move them into the Yammer Files section.

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